That’s when they walked in, with him in tow. He was soaking wet from the rain, even his scrawny little beard was dripping. They led him to the small room and I joined them. The man was shivering from head to foot, and he said absolutely nothing when they questioned him. I went over to where he sat and looked into his dilated eyes; he shivered inside the coat seemingly glued to his frail body.
I hadn’t been following the story — actually, I knew nothing about it. I’d been out of it for a while. . all I did was sit and wait in that office, and I wondered why they’d brought him in. He looked like one of those beggars the city is so full of nowadays. To me, he looked like something out of my childhood — you know, the character from the ditty we sang, “Abu Hashisheh the drunkard, who sold his wife for a tankard.” But it couldn’t be him, because his clothes weren’t all ragged like Abu Hashisheh’s, and he didn’t look like he’d been drinking.
But, boy, did he smell! That smell was the worst thing about him. When he took off his pith helmet, I saw that his white hair was black wiht grime, and the hand he smoothed it down with was no more than a claw of bony fingers. When he sat down, he just collapsed into the chair with a thud, as if there were no muscles in his legs. One of the boys offered him a cigarette, but he indicated that he didn’t smoke with his index finger pointed up.
And then they took him away — I’d left the room by then, I couldn’t stand the smell. Anyway, they took him and I never saw him again… and no one talked about it again. . not much, anyway. . but that smell, oh, the smell was so awful, like the smell that time on the mountaintop, so faraway. .
We were trudging through the snow. Our feet sank with every step and we were giddy with laughter as we could practically touch the clouds with our outstretched arms. We tried to break into a run, but couldn’t. It felt like we were holding the sky between our very fingers, as Mohammad Saleh said — he died over there in the snow, and they never did find his body. I don’t remember how the sky looked that day, but every time I see Mohammad’s picture hanging on the wall, with the word “Sanneen” scrawled across it-I feel like crying. Though even crying isn’t the same any more. . I can’t now, the tears just don’t seem to come.
I don’t know exactly what happened, but one day, there on the mountaintop, I found myself suddenly being dragged by the scruff of the neck across a huge expanse of gravel and stones — at least, that’s what it felt like. I wanted to tell them to stop, stop it now! The pain was excruciating, it felt as if my head had been severed from my neck and was rolling away. But no one heard me, as if they’d all gone deaf. There was no other sensation besides the pain and this terrible echo reverberating inside my head. . every sound multiplying endlessly inside my ears. But I couldn’t hear. I kept saying, please. .
And then, somehow, I found myself somewhere else entirely. No, not quite. . I don’t know how to describe it, when I moved my head it felt like the gravel and stones were inside it now, so I cried out, “Ya immi — oh mother of mine, where are you?” And then I opened my eyes. . or I thought I did. But there was nothing there, everything was black. I tried to sit up. So I’m dead, I thought, this is what death must be like, I must be dead. I felt a terrible stab of grief, like something sharp was piercing my gut. I said to myself, it’s over for you, Fahd. And then I saw my mother’s face as she said “it’s all over”. . and then planes were circling overhead like locusts, white planes, blowing dust into everyone’s eyes. So I lay completely still. I was dead.
Since there are no tears in death, I didn’t cry. When I tried to sit up, however, I found I couldn’t move. . So I was in a grave! That was it! A grave is shapeless. . a grave is just, well, a grave. . nothing but blackness, you can’t see any colors. . but then I started seeing these little dots, black ones and brown ones and red ones, growing larger and then smaller. I could see the dots really clearly.
Then someone’s hand was shaking me. What was that? And there was a woman’s voice, it sounded really muffled, like it was wrapped in cotton wool. And then this hand touched my head.
“He seems better, Doctor.”
I tried to move, to say something, but the dots disappeared and the voice went away. That woman’s muffled voice was gone. Everything vanished! I tried to speak, and felt a hand on my lips.
“It’s alright, you’re OK.” I wanted to ask her where I was. Again, she repeated, “It’s alright.” And then, “You’ve only lost one eye. The other one is fine.”
She sat me up and started to feed me. . I wanted to talk to her, to say… but she gave me this hot drink, and said I should sleep. So I slept… no, actually, I didn’t. . I had been asleep all this time, it felt like forever. And then, it dawned on me: I was blind!
I began to howl in the dark. I had finally woken up, and all I could do was shout and scream. There were hurried footsteps and voices.
“A tranquilizer. . Give him a tranquilizer. . where are they?”
I screamed until I was hoarse. I don’t know how those screams came about, I don’t know where those sounds originated, but then something pricked my arm and everything became calm. The doctor explained in his quiet, steady voice that I had been hit by an “Energa” missile and that I had multiple burns on the face and eyes. He told me that they had operated on me, that only one eye was permanently damaged and that the other one was “perfectly alright.”
Then he said, “We’ll take the bandage off in two weeks, you must be patient. . you’re a fighter.”
“I don’t believe you,” I replied, now hoarse. I told him I didn’t believe him and that I was sure I was totally blind. He swore by every one of the prophets, he reassured me, he cajoled me, he tried convincing me, but I didn’t believe him. After that, I said nothing at all, I refused to speak. I just sat up in bed so they could feed me and let them hold my hand to guide me to the bathroom.
Lying in bed, I’d listen to every noise and try and picture my mother’s face. . Sitt Zakiyyah’s face. . so reminiscent of Jerusalem, with its maze of wrinkles like the streets crisscrossing the city… I had never been to Jerusalem, and I didn’t think I’d ever go there. But to me, the furrows on her face seemed like the narrow streets of Jerusalem that Kamal described to us before he left for the States. Kamal left without ever experiencing the taste of fire piercing his belly. After he left, I never heard from him, until I called him from Madrid that day. “I’m married!” he said, his voice brimming with laughter, just as it used to when we were kids at the American School of Saida together.
I told him about my eyes. And he told me about Lily’s. He said she had long hair that fell across her face and twinkling eyes. “The whites of her eyes envelop me as they stretch all the way from there to here,” he told me. “She lives here, in America, and I paint pictures of her every day. I’ll send you one.”
Lying in bed and picturing my mother’s face, I thought I saw it crumple as she embraced me. Like the streets of Jerusalem, old Jerusalem, with its warren of narrow alleys and painted crucifixes everywhere, its processions of bishops and clergy, and the Holy Sepulcher glows with light. That’s how Kamal had described it. “The sepulcher aglow with light,” he had said. And in my mind’s eye, I could see that light. .
One day, when I was little, I came home from school and told my mother about Cana. I told her our divinity teacher at the American School of Saida said that Jesus Christ had performed his first miracle here, in our village, when he turned jars of water into wine. “No, son, it wasn’t our village,” she said.
“Yes, it was. The teacher read from the Gospels, and he read the word Cana. I told him we were from Cana.”